I have no particular problem with the idea of packaging binary data
along with an XML document in a MIME envelope. It seems a reasonable
thing to do for some use cases. However, a XOP envelope is not an XML
document, though it contains such a document, in addition to binary
data.
It is therefore unreasonable to expect XML APIs such as DOM to do
more than process the XML content of a XOP envelope. Doing so would
be actively harmful to the XML community. It would pollute DOM with
features that have no function when processing XML, as opposed to
XOP. Processing XOP requires a XOP API, not an XML API.
All the fancy language about infosets notwithstanding, it's clear
you're not interested in processing XML. A XOP document is not an XML
document, and you're not even willing to expose it through standard
XML APIs. XOP may be useful, but it's clearly not XML. Please don't
ask the XML community to break its standards to fit your new and
different invention.
--
Elliotte Rusty Harold
elharo@metalab.unc.edu
Effective XML (Addison-Wesley, 2003)
http://www.cafeconleche.org/books/effectivexmlhttp://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN%3D0321150406/ref%3Dnosim/cafeaulaitA